10 de julio de 2009
 
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G. M. MEAVE | LA BITÁCORA
Calligraphic
penitence
You guessed it: By keeping on drawing devils, demons, pagan muses, cosmic courtesans and malevolent snakes, God –the Seer Of It All– sent me a deserved penitence in the shape of a Medieval job.
A job that had something of a torment, by the way. I had never been closer to the stern monastic life (in this lifetime, at least) than in the past few days. I happened to be –like a monk in a cell– stuck to the parchement, the turkey quill, the gold foil and the scriptorium, like those devoted Dark Ages illuminators. (Besides, I had a power blackout.)
The work consisted in two folios of parchement in the style of a Book of Hours. A gift for a patron of La Salle University.
By a happy coincidence –or a sinister karma– the rectorship of La Salle contacted me (through my cuate Leonardo Vázquez) without even knowing that I had been myself a former Lasallian student, a long time ago. (My scholastic, sacred past keeps chasing me.)
The challenge was that I had to execute the work in record time: 48 hours.
It’s worth saying that everything is original. Each border, each volute, each fleuron, each ornament was especially created. In a time when the norm is to rely on deceiving cliparts or scans from Dover or Pepin Press books, I am proud to say that everything in this work is unique –with the exception of the La Salle emblem, only slightly retouched. The proof? The pencil sketches, shown below.
For the Christ, I was inspired by the Byzantine Pantokrator, with a kind of modern twist, you may say. Letters are –yeah!–Black Gothic Letters, SuperduperGothic, as God commands and as I damn like it. Amen.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_hourshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_hourshttp://www.it-fadu.org/disenador_detalle.php?id=51http://www.it-fadu.org/disenador_detalle.php?id=51http://www.doverbooks.co.uk/pcp/Celtic,%20Medieval.htmlhttp://www.pepinpress.com/cataloguehttp://www.pepinpress.com/cataloguehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_Pantocratorshapeimage_26_link_0shapeimage_26_link_1shapeimage_26_link_2shapeimage_26_link_3shapeimage_26_link_4shapeimage_26_link_5shapeimage_26_link_6shapeimage_26_link_7